Question of the Day - 14 June 2021

I’m sure president Biden will demand that those trains will be battery powered and maybe even solar powered with all the  unblocked sun on that route. I’d hate to think of the gallons of fossil fuel that would be used. Maybe steam. I know, better than all the cars and planes. 

First of all, the infrastructure bill ain't happening, because Republicans don't want it--for the simple reason that Democrats do want it. Maybe some watered-down version with enough funding to buy new tires for all the buses in Paducah and to fix the footbridge over Greasy Creek.

The fact that the various high-speed rail line planners are unable or unwilling to actually extend the line into the L.A. basin makes this a non-starter. You drive to Victorville, you're only three hours away from Vegas, and it would take a substantial fraction of that time to park, wait for the train, etc.--which would still take over an hour to get there. So, virtually no time savings, and a lot more money (the tickets won't be cheap).

As for reviving Amtrak service--well, if you've ever made the mistake of riding Amtrak--anywhere--you know what a disaster that would be. It's The Little Engine That Can't. 

How about an underground vacuum tube!

Kevin, it aint happening because there is so much crap that has nothing to do with infrastructure.  It's a give away.  As for the train from Los Angeles, it is way faster to drive, as stated many times.  I drive in from  the San Fernando Valley.  3.5 hours if you leave at 5:30am, from my front door to Caesars.  And flying from Burbank takes just as long and you would need a very expensive rental car, if you can get one. Spending the money on widening the I-15 from the I5 junction to Las Vegas, 3 or 4 lanes all the way, that is a great infrastructure project.  When they were doing all those bridge repairs along the route, they should have made them all 3 lanes wide.  Same for I40.

Actually I have twice taken Amtrak from Greensboro to Washington, DC and enjoyed it immensely both times.  It was fun to start from the beautiful restored old Southern Railroad station here in town.  Much more relaxing than driving and a nice break from flying, with much more comfortable seats.  Plus it dropped me off at the lovely Union Station where I was easily able to pick up Metro to where I wanted to go (once a downtown hotel and once Silver Springs).  I've also taken the State Fair special which is also a nice break from fighting the insane traffic around Raleigh.  So not everyone who has ridden Amtrak sees it as a disaster!  While I was still working I had several coworkers who lived in Durham and really enjoyed taking to train in to work, once again avoiding all that driving.  I also had a friend who always took it when visiting Charlotte - avoiding an hour-and-a-half drive at a very reasonable price (much cheaper than any shuttle services).

Amtrak works OK in the densely populated urban corridors of the East Coast, because distances traveled are short and crucially, the infrastructure (that word again) for railroads has existed there since the Civil War. In the West, it's a different story. It's brutally difficult to build a new line or to modernize an existing one, given the rugged terrain. Plus, there's the simple consideration of revenues and profits. You have a line that, for example, goes from L.A. to Salt Lake City, and it visits only three major cities in 800 miles. Who would bother to spend all day on a train when an airline flight can get you there in 2 hours?

That's why it works on the East Coast. There, the distances between major cities are often less than 100 miles. The train makes more sense then, and the airlines less sense.

Not me, but my sister has traveled many miles via Amtrak, north to south (New York to our home town) and back.  She has done it enough to be familiar with the better, i.e. more comfortable/spacious cars/routes and schedules, etc.  Cost savings are a plus, but she is also an adventurous traveler and takes any 'bumps in the road' that may occur in stride.  Uses the time for books she has waited to read, knit, etc.  My brother and his family have used Amtrak for intermediate legs of vacation trips, find it a fun diversion from the hassles (and expense for a family) of air travel.  So Amtrak works just fine for some.

Candy

I traveled cross-country on Amtrak to LV in the 80's and 90's, with the trips culminating at the Plaza downtown. I also went after 2000, with Amtrak dropping off in Kingman, then a shuttle taking us into LV the rest of the way. In the 90's, I was marooned in Salt Lake City overnight, waiting for trains from Seattle and SF to come together with our section to form the Desert Wind. Snow storm issues. Being on time always a problem. We were stuck overnight in Kingman at 3 AM once, waiting for the eastbound train, sitting outside with just a couple of concrete benches and many scorpions that (who knew?) like the night air.

Amtrak is ok for students and short commutes, but forget it for overnight long hauls.  I live in the Chicago suburbs and I have a yearly meeting in Reno.  Here are my choices.  A 4 hour flight @ $200. A 28 hour drive costing approx $225 in gas OR a 44 hour Amtrak ride @ $157 with overpriced food and $7.50 beers.  Unfortunately for a lot of us it's the destination not the journey. Amtrak just can't compete with the airlines. 

Don't count Elon Musk out, either.
His tunnel from LA to Vegas is, IMHO, the most viable option to date.

Even if the travel time was only 2 hours, who wants to be in a tunnel that long? He would have to incorporate some travelling above ground just to maintain sanity.

To the poster who made that travel-time claim: Not to put you down, but 280 miles in 3.5 hours = 80 mph. Not only is that inadvisable for the obvious reasons, but it's only possible if you don't leave L.A. on Friday afternoon/evening. Half or more of Southern Californian adults work Mon-Fri day shift and thus are forced to get caught up in the horrendous traffic jam on the interstate if they drive. That makes an airplane or train preferable at that time. Most drivers who aren't forced to travel at those times will average 65 on the urban freeways and 70 on the interstate, and even without a meal (or other) break, that will mean up to 4.5 hours each way. Still, the overall time spent to take a plane (which involves extra time to/from each airport) could take just as long if you go via LAX. If you live near one of the regional airports and can use them (Burbank, Ontario, Long Beach), the total time could be 1 hour less.

To the poster wrote that the cost of gas for driving between Chicago to Reno would be @ $225: You can't just look at the cost of gas; you have to include the wear & tear on your car too.  The cost varies, depending on what car you have, but using an average [W&T + gas] cost figure of $0.50/mile, the round trip is 3,800 miles, so the true ultimate cost would be $1,900, or over 8 times your gas-only estimate. This makes the driving option the worst financial scenario, by an enormous amount. It only makes sense to drive that trip if you want to be able to "see America", to stop in towns or small cities to eat at local places and sight-see, and/or to visit tourist sites along the way. I would like to do just that for a lot of our highways, but it requires having a car, enough time and enough money to be able to swing it. But if you're someone who just "drives straight from Point A to Point B", then I don't think that driving is your best option.

I took Amtrak from L.A. to Vegas exactly once, in the late '80s, I believe. I didn't have a car at the time, so in checking out the options for getting to Vegas, I wanted to try Amtrak for the first time, just to have the experience. I hadn't ridden any train for over 30 years, so I wanted to have that mere experience, and I also wanted to compare traveling to Vegas by train with going via airplane or bus. I never took that train again, for 2 reasons. First, the one-way trip took a ridiculous amount of time: 8+ hours up, 10 hours back, in part because the conductor stopped the train for 45 minutes out in the desert because he thought he saw something ahead on the track. (This should've taken 5 minutes to check out and okay.) The other reason was that Amtrak advertised that the train had both a dining car and a lounge car, but there was actually just 1 car to fill both purposes, and of course all the smokers camped out in that car, making it uninhabitable for us nonsmokers.

Too many people and entities are casually mentioning that the starting point for some kinds of trains to go to Vegas would be Victorville instead of Union Station in downtown L.A., as if this were an immaterial detail.  Actually, this is a HUGE factor. Even in mild weather, the prospect of taking a train to Vegas that begins in Victorville requires the traveler to come up with a plan for getting to Victorville from whatever his/her home town is. That extra wrinkle in itinerary is one thing, but if the transfer from the 1st leg of travel (to Victorville) over to the depot where the Vegas train would begin requires any layover, then in the 5 summer months, it would be critical for the depot to have a solid roof and an enclosed interior that is air-conditioned, because Victorville is in the desert, and it gets as much as 20 degrees hotter than the L.A. basin. I've read a lot about these trains, and not a single article has even mentioned this factor, but this element could ruin a trip.

As the posters mentioned, time and pauses are often an issue for Amtrak. Because of the track-sharing rules and regs, part of the problem has been that Amtrak routes must defer to commercial trains when there are track-sharing overlaps. So Amtrak will pause and sit and allow commercial cargo to have first crack at use of an intersecting or overlapping track usage.

Also, yes, Victorville is not a great starting point. That's not really an LA to LV route.